Beyond Borrowing

Abstract

This article offers a historically and hermeneutically refined understanding of isrāʾīliyyāt by distinguishing between the Qurʾān’s Late Antique narrative environment and later exegetical practices that supplement Qurʾānic stories. Narrative materials belonging to the Qurʾān’s own intertextual horizon should not be retroactively classified as isrāʾīliyyāt, since the category becomes methodologically meaningful only at the level of reception. As a case study, the article examines the story of Mūsā and the unnamed “servant of God” (Q 18:65–82), whose deliberate anonymity foregrounds epistemological tension rather than biographical detail. Classical tafsīr resolves this openness by identifying the figure as al-Ḫiḍr and embedding the episode within an expanded narrative framework. The article argues that isrāʾīliyyāt reflects a dynamic and bidirectional circulation of narrative motifs within shared intellectual and cultural spaces, challenging linear models of borrowing and influence.